Ames, Ia. – Michele Bachmann, the first woman to win the Iowa straw poll, is now the official front-runner in Iowa, but Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s entrance into the race leaves her little time to savor victory.

The Minnesota congresswoman’s win Saturday, buoyed by a feisty tea party presence, recasts the image that dogged her just a few months ago – that she’s too out of the mainstream – but it doesn’t guarantee she will do well in coming months in Iowa or other early voting states.

With 16,892 Iowans casting ballots, Bachmann won with 4,823 votes. Texas’ Ron Paul, who was locked in a nail-biting duel for the trophy, claimed second with 4,671.

Fellow Minnesotan Tim Pawlenty’s distant third-place finish, with 2,293 votes, signaled serious trouble, several Iowa Republicans and politics watchers said. Pawlenty, a former governor, took off only five days from the Iowa campaign trail, excluding Sundays, in the month leading up to the straw poll. His staffers had tried to energize his campaign by blanketing the state with TV, radio and mail advertisements and investing everything it could in bus rentals to haul backers to Ames.

Pawlenty’s national office opened its checkbook for the Iowa operation.

“This is a mortal wound for Tim Pawlenty,” said Jeff Roe, a GOP strategist who worked on Mike Huckabee’s campaign in 2008. “He is so hobbled by these results. I don’t know how he could continue to fundraise and run a credible campaign.”

Bachmann’s win came amid predictions that the national race would become a head-to-head battle between Perry and Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and business leader, while Bachmann would fight to keep up.

“This is her moment, and it’s going to be a short moment because Perry will come after her,” said J. Ann Selzer, an Iowa pollster. “I expect Perry to come out with both guns blazing.” Perry, during a competing press spectacle in South Carolina, trumpeted Saturday that he’s all in. It’s time to push the reset button, several Iowa Republicans said.

Perry knows there’s pent-up demand within the GOP for a new candidate, Selzer said. So he will most likely unleash a wave of campaign spending and criticism of Bachmann’s record, she said.

“Perry will know he needs to win Iowa,” she said. “That’s an easier win than going up against Romney in New Hampshire. I think we’ll see a lot of him.” Ryan Rhodes, an Iowa tea party leader who has endorsed Bachmann, said, “I believe it becomes a Romney-Bachmann-Perry race.” Iowans at the straw poll said Perry fits the gap in the race.

He appeals to those who don’t think Bachmann is White House material and those who plug their noses at Romney because they think his conservative credentials are squishy, they said.

Scott MacBeth, 47, of Marshalltown, who wrote in Perry’s name on his straw poll ballot, said: “It just seems like he has the same conservative values I do.” Perry, who wasn’t a declared candidate when the ballots were finalized and therefore wasn’t listed, drummed up 718 write-in votes for sixth place, eclipsing Romney’s 567 votes for seventh place, even though Romney’s name was on the ballot.

A 527 fundraising group that backs Perry had a strong presence in Ames, and purchased about 500 tickets for straw poll voters.

Look forward to crossing paths on the campaign trail.” Romney won the straw poll four years ago, but wound up coming in second in the 2008 Iowa caucuses to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. He made a rare visit to Iowa this week, but he left after participating in Thursday night’s Fox News debate in Ames.

Huckabee told The Des Moines Register he thinks people underestimate Bachmann, and that her win, by 152 votes, is “gas for her fire.” “Michele is really a very articulate candidate,” said Huckabee, who sailed to a win on the wings of evangelicals in 2008. “She’s strong. She’s not afraid of people, even when people are throwing things right in her face, she stands in the batter’s box and doesn’t flinch.” Bachmann’s aides said they eclipsed their goal of supporters physically in Ames, but were worried not all would vote. Four years ago saw a dramatic undervote, with as many as 30,000 on campus but only 14,000 voters.

But Bachmann pulled it off. The only woman to participate in the straw poll before Bachmann was Elizabeth Dole in 1999. She placed third with 14 percent of the vote.

The in-fighting between the two candidates from the Twin Cities area during Thursday night’s prime-time TV debate demonstrated that there isn’t room in the race for both, several Iowa Republicans said.

“Now we know Tim Pawlenty can fight,” Fong said. “Everyone expected him to pull a hockey stick out from behind the podium. And it showed Michele Bachmann can take body blows for two hours. But the message was lost.”

Paul’s second-place finish wasn’t a surprise. Straw polls are designed to fit the temperament of Paul acolytes, whose ranks are dense with 20- and 30-somethings and loyal, motivated believers. And the Iowa straw poll is a ground war: which campaign can bus more, feed more, ticket more.

Paul’s strong finish cast a symbolic message that his supporters are tired of war, worried the country is going broke and exasperated with the federal debt, several Iowa Republicans said. It was a hat tip to a congressman who has plugged the same message via loud megaphone for four years – until the rest of the country caught on.

But when some Iowa Republicans close their eyes, they just can’t picture Paul in the White House. They were relieved he didn’t come in first. “Iowans just love him, then other people see his antics,” said Joni Scotter, a Marion Republican.

A fourth-place finish was a veritable surge for Pennsylvania’s Rick Santorum, whose polling numbers have been intractably low. He took home 1,657 votes.